Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Gowns

"Back one million years ago (ok 4 years ago, but that’s one million mid-20s years, right?), Ezra and I were going to go on our first west coast tour. We had only been a band for like, a month. But Ezra’s old friend Peter B. was coming to the west coast and asked Ezra to go on tour with him, and then Ezra asked me to come with. We were barely a band but said yes. I remember Peter and Seve hanging out in our Highland Park apartment (which was very small), and going out on the steps and into the little backyard. This eventually got us evicted. I mean, they only hung out for a few days, but the fact that we would even be associated with such suspicious characters was enough to make our landlady decide we needed to GO. During that time, Peter and Seve made some CDRs for their band Sejayno to take on the road. Merch, man. 'Merch' is the only way to make touring money for the brokeass noise crew. What, you think you get a guarantee?
 
shasta stop on gowns tour 05 with sejayno

So Ezra and I decided to follow suit.  We had some little demos we had each made individually, and someone had recently recorded a show of ours at a little gallery (David Kendall?). I thought the live recording was cool and wanted to put it on a CDR to sell.  Ezra was firmly against it. He tried to warn me by saying, 'you know, once you put something out into the world, it’s out there forever.' and I was like, 'yeah whatever, who gives a shit? NO ONE WILL EVER LISTEN TO THIS ANYWAY!!!'

Last week BJ Rubin, who runs the Pukekos blog, got in touch with me. From Brooklyn. Apparently his friend, who used to work at Kill Rock Stars had a really old CDR or ours that he had brought from Olympia to New York, and could he post it on his blog? There were like 35 of these made TOPS. Could be more like 20. There were probably 5 people at the Olympia show we played. The fact that this poor little CDR survived 4 years and 3000 miles is pretty remarkable. And a good lesson to us all that once you put something out in the world, it never goes away. Make it good."

 
playing in a PDX living room w. sejayno and smegma one million years ago



Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Gowns.

Gowns (Pukekos)
1. Johnny
2. Experts
3. Rope
4. Ghost Merry Ribbon
5. Town
6. Quick + Pure + Bright
7. Nobody Home
8. Heaven
9. Paper
10. Feathers
11. Rope
12. Shaved





5 comments:

Emmanuel said...

Great JB !! Thanks very much... !!

Dodecahedron said...

AHHH, thank you for this!

dfbm said...

thanks for the facts behind! very unique for a blog ;-)

Unknown said...

so fantastic!! thanks, man for posting this. i can't recall being so bewitched by a twosome in a VERY long time, if ever, when i saw them on that 2005 tour with carla & amps for christ.
erika started Gowns' set by walking outside the club then re-entering a moment later singing a capella psycho gospel power thru a bullhorn... i pretty much haven't been the same ever since. you've made my month.

lizzomatic said...

oh weird, that's my old living room. I think I even took that picture. ezra gave me a copy of this cd long ago, but it was stolen. thanks so much!